It was a Friday and Kevin was frustrated, not annoyed, just frustrated. Although he knew himself well enough to know that this frustration could lead to anger. And if Kevin got angry…..well, nobody liked Kevin when he was angry, least of all his co-workers, and certainly not Kevin. He hated himself for it, but sometimes he just couldn’t help it.

Kevin had actually had a very good day up until now. He’d woken up feeling refreshed, the eggs he’d eaten for breakfast were soft boiled to perfection so he could dip every soldier in, he had had a great mid-year appraisal from his boss Jeff, and he had managed to correlate all the figures from last week’s KTS reports. Even with all this joy in Kevin’s life, frustration was threating to get the best of him.

He had just sat down at his desk after coming back from lunch and a smell had caught his attention. It instantly put an image from his childhood in his head. Unfortunately all the memory showed was him looking through the eyes of a mask up at a table full of people who were all looking at something in the middle of the table. What was it on the table? He had to know. Oh he really had to know.

Stuart, one of Kevin’s co-workers, was the first to spot the rising levels of frustration in Kevin. All the usual signs were showing, the scratching of his head just above the right ear, the loosening of the tie, the erratic blinking that looked like Morse code without the sound. And the sweating had begun too, oh the profuse sweating.

Stuart emailed Tom and Kate to alert them, but purposefully chose not to tell Brian, the only other co-worker in their team. Stuart had his reasons for this; past disagreements with Brian over whether the Incredible Hulk could beat Superman in a straight up fist fight was one, the fact that Brian’s desk faced away from Kevin’s was another, but mostly it was because Stuart was a bit of a twat.

Tom looked up from his monitor after receiving Stuarts email and looked over at Kevin; Tom was not in the mood for this. He remembered the last time Kevin had got angry. It was his old colleague James who had got the full brunt it. He really missed James some days. In that particular incident Tom had been casually talking to all his co-workers, about cooking a fancy meal for his girlfriend. Stuart had joked that Tom would burn a salad. Kevin had interjected with, what was in hindsight, a useful tip regarding seasoning fresh meat. James had quipped that Kevin couldn’t boil an egg, and this comment had the effect of turning Kevin in to what Stuart had once coined in an email as Krazy Kevin Kaka.

When Kate saw that Brian was not included on the email, she was very pissed off with Stuart. It wasn’t that she particularly liked Brian, it’s just that Brian had the excel skills she needed to finish the work she was doing. Tom and Stuart were useless at creating pivot tables, Kevin was alright at it, but she wasn’t about to ask him. She was just thinking she ought to forward the email to Brian, when she looked up and saw Kevin shaking with rage and starting to rise from his seat. Tom and Stuart were already pulling the old ‘pretend to be on the phone’ trick that had worked quite well during past outbursts. It had worked well as a deflection of attention when the likes of Mary, Frank and Jerome had left the team. Kate made the decision to look after number one (as she normally did) and picked up her phone and started spouting all sorts of corporate bullshit to a dial tone.

Brian was eating an egg mayo sandwich whilst concentrating on his work. Well it wasn’t so much his work as it was Kate’s. He was sorting all the formulas on a table she had been working on. He did it just because she’d asked. God, Brian really fancied Kate, she was so beautiful to him. He was even putting some nice colours on it to highlight certain data. The first he knew about Kevin having one of his outbursts was while he was applying a lovely shade of vermillion to a set of figures. He heard the Krazy Kevin Kry (another doozy from Stuart) behind him that was so shrill that that he had to shut his eyes. When Brian’s eyes reopened it was with surprise that instead of facing his monitor he was facing towards the beautiful Kate, which was odd as she diagonally behind him. It was nice that he had got to see her one last time before his neck snapped. Kevin instantly relaxed, as he always did after one of his ‘outbursts’.
Kate quickly stood up from her chair. ‘For fucks sake Kevin!’ She exclaimed. ‘I really needed Brian to finish my report.’
Stuart, Tom looked at each other with looks of pure awkwardness.
Kevin hung his head in shame. ‘I’m sorry’ he said. ‘You won’t tell Jeff about this will you?’
The silence continued for what felt like an age until finally Kate said, ‘It’s a good thing you’re a whizz at accounting Kevin. And you’re going to finish my report’ she added. Kevin nodded and went back to his desk.

Tom and Stuart breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.
Stuart, who could never resist a quip after an awkward silence said,
‘Well I always thought Brian was a pain in the neck’.
‘Did you get that from an Arnie movie or something? Said Tom.
‘No’ said Stuart.
‘Well it was shit’ said Tom.
‘You’re shit’ said Stuart.
This made Kevin smile, and as he got stuck into completing Kate’s report, he suddenly remembered what was on the table. It was just an egg. Silly Kevin.

As there is now under a month till Christmas, and that this 30 blog a day effort is collectively called ‘The Write-mare before Christmas’, it seems appropriate to do this top ten list. Yes in my continuing quest to find my favourite film, doing top tens by categories and sub categories continues with my favourite Christmas films….well films set at Christmas at least. Would they be yours too?

10. Elf (2003)

What stands out for me – Will Ferrell’s performance is terrific and laugh out loud at times. The premise of an Elf leaving Santa and seeing the real world had been done before in Santa Clause the Movie, but Elf adds new fun to hold its own, make you laugh and give you that christmassy feeling.

I enjoyed seeing this actor in it – Peter Dinkalidge

Great quote – Gimbel’s Manager: Why are you smiling like that?

Buddy: I just like to smile, smiling’s my favourite

–

9. A Christmas Story (1983)

What stands out for me – This film is more associated with and watched in America. Although for me it still shows the magic of being a kid a Christmas and some realities that come with it. Well worth checking out in other countries too. Oh and this was the film that spawned the iconic image of a false leg lamp shade too.

Let me start by saying that the BBC is a wonderful institute in the way it’s paid for and therefore the lack of advertising is terrific. Without advertising we don’t get all that talk saying ‘stay tuned, because after break this is going to happen and you don’t want to miss that’. But is this actually the case? I think in a different way they do. In fact the BBC finds ingenious ways of putting spoilers in to a show.

Lately the BBC has been running ‘The Truth about’ programmes which herald big revelations about certain subjects. The Truth about; food, population, climate change, the house price bubble and most recently, (just on tonight) the truth about working for Amazon.

Now don’t get me wrong, these shows have been very good and very informative. Well to a point. You see the biggest headline on the BBC news website for the day these shows were on, essentially told you everything that happened in the show before it happened and then dressed it up as a breaking news headline/article. It’s not until you get to the end of the article, you realise it’s an advertisement for a TV show on that evening, and they’ve told you everything you were going to watch. Why could they have not just done the headline the day after?

After yesterday’s scathing review of the Dr Who Live Afterparty, I wanted to write one more thing about the 50th anniversary of Dr Who that had a more positive feel. Now I could write about the fabulous episode itself ‘The Day of the Doctor’, but I think everyone is in agreement that that was fantastic. I would recommend Den of Geek for a succint review of that.

I wanted to talk about ‘The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot’. This was something that was mentioned on the Afterparty, but should have probably been shown straight after it, or indeed instead of it.Read more of this post

Well, all the build-up was worth it, ‘The Day of the Doctor’, a fabulous episode to celebrate 50 years of Dr Who was had. But they couldn’t let it lie. The BBC thought, let’s do an after show party, and lets film it live. That may have sounded good at the time I’m sure, but it wasn’t.

Live TV rarely works out these days and to make it work best takes a lot of preparation and rehearsal. This appeared to have little or none of that. Hosted by an over caffeinated breathless Zoe ball and the most insincere man who’d I’d never heard of. Zoe interviewed some of the past cast and crew of Dr who, putting her head down to read the questions of her lap and not giving these people who were kind of the point of the show to fully answer. The questions asked to guests and fans were all so generic: Did you like the episode? What’s was your best memory of filming it? What was your favourite enemy that you fought (asked to a chap who only appeared in a handful of episodes). Then the answers were just as bad: Yes I loved the episode, I thought it was fantastic. Although one chap said it was like a dirty movie for him. That was funny.

Traveling for work can be a gruelling experience at times, but you have got to take the rough with the smooth. So I thought I would share a couple of things I saw at Kings Cross Station.

First, and probably known by most now, is the Harry Potter themed platform 9 and ¾. It does help somewhat being a Harry Potter fan, but if you do visit Kings Cross and you have a spare 5 minutes or so (which by the people rush around, you really wouldn’t think so) it is worth checking out. There is a wizards luggage half way through the wall at platform 9 and 3/4, with a heafty queue of people eager to have their picture taken with it. Next door is a the merchandise shops with all sorts of goodies in it, cashing in of course and quite right too.

Health and safety is of course an important element of every day life. The amount of mockery it receives for being bureaucratic and molly codling to the general public, has reached laughable proportions.

Which is why I am going to contribute to this hilarity by pointing out oddities about sign I saw in a public toilet cubicle.

First off I thought it seemed out of place. It starts with a warning for a wet floor. This floor was not wet. I could understand what it might mean, as a wet floor is part and parcel of public toilet floors (well they are in the gents).

Infact, as an aside, Anyone not on their guard when walking into a public loo is either a braver person than I, or has led a blessed life. For most of us have, at least once, encountered a cubicle left in such a state that it can only be thought of as shitageddon.